


In the Quiet, in the Crowd

by fiorediloto



Series: The Earth Below My Feet [4]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Missing Scene, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:16:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23672182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiorediloto/pseuds/fiorediloto
Summary: “Let's go to mine,” Nix murmured, hand sliding up to cup around Dick's shoulder.It was so fresh, so careless, the way he'd said that, like it was just a matter of choosingyoursormine. Like they were anywhere else but in the middle of a combat theater, where there was no such thing as mine or yours, because anything that belonged to either of them was thousands of miles away.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Series: The Earth Below My Feet [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1331600
Comments: 32
Kudos: 104





	In the Quiet, in the Crowd

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [These Days of Dust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20042566), but it can be read as a standalone (no explicit references to past events occurred in the series).
> 
> Much like the rest of this series, this fic is based heavily on Dick Winter's _Beyond Band of Brothers_ and Larry Alexander's _Biggest Brother_ (with some help from Stephen Ambrose's _Band of Brothers_ ). The books are treated as fictional works complementary to the series. None of this is about the real-life veterans or the people close to them.
> 
> Thanks as usual to the lovely [Impala_Chick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Impala_Chick/pseuds/Impala_Chick) for beta-reading and to [ThrillingDetectiveTales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales) for holding my hand and reassuring me that I could do this :D
> 
> \---
> 
> Title and opening quote from Mumford and Sons' _In the Quiet, in the Crowd_.
> 
> \---

_Do you ever think of me_  
_In the quiet, in the crowd?_

  
  
  


**_9 October 1944, Hemmen_ **

“We should celebrate,” Nix said. 

Dick pretended that the invitation wasn’t aimed at him. Nix’s celebrations always had a distinct alcoholic flavor, and maybe at another time Dick wouldn’t have minded joining, soaking in the cheerful atmosphere from the comfort of the sidelines, but right now he was in no mood for a plastered Lewis Nixon.

“We should, shouldn’t we,” Harry agreed from the depths of Dick’s new chair, legs crossed at the ankle, boots on the edge of Dick’s new desk. “Pour one out for Major Horton.”

“Good old Major. As hard a drinker as they come.”

“Hear, hear.”

Dick thanked the men who’d carried his footlocker up the two flights of stairs and gave the clunky old box a critical look. Unhappy, he nudged it back and forth a few times, until not even his old OCS instructor could have found exception at how perfectly parallel and centered it sat at the foot of his bed.

“Come on, Dick,” Nix insisted, perched on the desk like some kind of talking bird. “I mean it. My treat this time.”

“ _This_ time?” Harry chipped in.

Dick refused to meet his former XO’s eyes as he watched Harry seemingly try to put Dick and alcohol together in a reasonable scenario.

“What?” Nix teased with a grin.

Harry’s eyes moved from one of his friends to the other, gauging their expressions. “You took him drinking? Without me?”

“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,” Nix declared, with a chirpy edge to his voice that suggested celebrations had already started for a while, though for how long Dick couldn’t say. It was getting harder and harder these days to tell when the drinking started and when it ended.

“Though if one _did_ tell,” Nix continued, in an affected tone, “they’d be bound to say that it was actually the other way round.”

Harry broke into an incredulous chuckle. “Bullshit.”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

“Every day since the day we met.”

Dick looked at his empty hands and started making himself busy with the contents of his footlocker. He felt restless, nervous energy coursing through his veins like low-voltage current. His skin felt prickly and his eyes sand-dry, the kind of soft burning feeling you couldn’t scratch nor blink away—and the less said about the crick in his neck, the better. In the coming days he would blame the latter on the desk, Sink’s reassurances that he would have to sit behind it as little as possible be damned. Already the growing stack of papers next to the typewriter told a different story.

“So you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that our battalion XO keeps a booze stash in his footlocker,” Nix said.

Harry hesitated. “What?”

With his arms deep into his trunk, Dick suddenly felt like a burrowing animal. He could feel the intensity of his friends’ twin gaze pierce a hole in the back of his head. As if on cue, he inadvertently nudged a half-drained bottle of Vat 69 from where it was nested under Dick’s clean underwear and sent it tinkling against a second, completely empty one. The desk creaked softly under Nix’s shifting weight. Dick imagined Nix minutely leaning forward, drawn by the bottle, a spark of interest making his eyes shine into sharper focus.

“This one’s empty,” Dick said irritably, pulling the bottle out of the footlocker and brandishing it under the light. He didn’t remember an empty one, but then again he didn’t keep tabs on Nix’s volatile stash any more than he did on his actual drinking.

“That was my reaction too,” Nix replied flippantly, legs hanging over the front of the desk.

The light-hearted tone incensed Dick even more. He stood up and walked the distance, placing the bottle on the table next to Nix with a none-too-gentle thud. “Can you get rid of your trash, at least?”

“Sure thing,” Nix replied, unfazed, though he held Dick’s look for a second longer than was entirely comfortable. He smiled a soft, genuine smile, but when he spoke again his voice had a smug ring to it that Dick suspected was mostly for Harry’s benefit. “Will you pass me the other one, now? There’s a good boy.”

Dick rolled his eyes and walked back to the footlocker, pulling the other bottle—the last—out of its padded nest. He handed it over to Nix and grabbed the papers from the desk in exchange, mostly as an excuse to keep himself busy. He sat on the bed with his homework, slowly browsing through the stack.

“There we go,” Nix said happily, unscrewing the cap. The whiskey sloshed through the neck of the bottle and through his lips and he swallowed it down as easily as if it were a light beer. “Cheers.”

“That’s your stash, not his,” Harry protested, accepting the bottle when Nix passed it over.

“Very perceptive, Welshy.”

“I’ll never understand why he puts up with you.”

“You can ask him. He’s sitting right there.”

Harry took a second gulp of whiskey and ignored the suggestion. Dick kept pointedly ignoring both of them, parsing the papers in search of something, anything deserving of his attention.

“’s a fucking mystery, is what it is,” Harry mumbled.

There was a strange quality to Nix’s voice when he spoke next, not quite off but almost so, a sense of _too much_ being poured into it, making it sound too easy, too cheerful, too casual—too _Nix-y_.

“So? He loves me. Many people do.” 

Dick looked up before he could stop himself, like a well-trained hound hearing his name called, and met Harry’s eyes from across the room. He’d been looking at Dick the whole time, Dick realized. Dick had to resist the urge to drop his gaze to his lap.

“And you love me too,” Nix pressed on, turning around to grab the bottle from Harry’s hand.

Harry’s eyes moved slowly from Dick’s face to Nix’s. He was smiling placidly as he ever did, a study in contentment.

“Buddy, I’m not lending you my footlocker. My love doesn’t get that far.”

“Like I would entrust you with anything stronger than apple juice, you roaring souse.”

“Hey, that’s a bit rich, don’t you think?”

Nix laughed. Perhaps Dick imagined a minimal strain to his laugh, and perhaps he’d imagined whatever he’d heard in Nix’s voice earlier. Nix thumped the heel of his boot rhythmically against the front panel of the desk, making the thin wood vibrate softly with each hit.

“Besides,” Harry said after a few more back-and-forths of the bottle, “doesn’t this make him your superior officer now?”

“Now that you mention it, it does.”

“How’s that feel?”

“Hell, it takes me back. That was a rough eight months.”

“He’s not that bad.”

“That’s ’cause I softened him up for you, Harry-boy. You’re welcome,” Nix proclaimed, raising the bottle in a mute toast. The hollow sloshing inside the bottle pronounced it almost empty.

“Watch it,” Harry said. 

“What?”

“He could get you court-martialed, you know.” Harry sniggered at his own joke. He suppressed a burp, making a little gassy sound in his mouth, and slouched a little lower on the chair. “Insubordinate and shit.”

Dick sighed. He’d divided his papers into three neat stacks by urgency, but now looking at them he realized what he’d known all along: that none of it was urgent.

“I guess he could,” Nix acknowledged amenably. “He’s got enough dirt on me that I could find myself up against a wall in no time.”

“Really? What kind?”

“Well, I’m not going to tell you, am I.”

“Why not?”

“Because you run your mouth a lot, Harry, that’s why.”

“I _don’t_.”

“Sure, buddy.” Nix turned around and patted Harry’s leg indulgently.

“Pass me that bottle,” Harry said, extending his right hand. He sounded a little embarrassed, which Dick suspected having to do with Nix’s diagnosis being mostly accurate, though perhaps a little callous.

“It’s empty, you sponge,” Nix replied, even though Dick could clearly see a thin layer of dark liquid at the bottom.

“Already? Well, I’m outta here, then.” Harry disentangled his legs with a groan, then heavily dropped one and then the other to the floor. The boots made the wooden floor clang deepily with a booming vibration.

“Sit down,” Nix commanded, smirking at Harry’s struggles. “We’re not done.”

“Nuh-uh. I’m not hanging around you sober after seven, buddy,” Harry declared.

Nix rolled his eyes all the way into his head. “What’s with everybody hating me when I’m sober? You’d make it really hard for a fellow to dry up.” Here he looked at Dick, whose mouth curled up in a half-smile.

“Cute,” Harry snorted. “Why don’t you roll that up and put it wherever ’Berlin by Christmas’ went?”

Harry grabbed the armrests of his chair to push himself up, but Nix repeated, “Sit down,” and the other man flopped back, seemingly willed into submission.

“January ’43,” Nix started, having apparently decided that it was time for an anecdote. It was a pastime he often indulged in after a few glasses—not that Dick would know much about it first-hand, but he’d heard more than one account of their nights out from Harry.

And sure enough, Harry groaned loudly. “Let me _go_ , Nixon.”

“January ’43,” Nix repeated, lifting his index finger in mock admonishment like a schoolmaster. “This man from 2nd Platoon comes back from the New Year’s furlough two hours after curfew. Says the trains have been running late. Dick takes him outside and gives him such an earful the poor guy loses his sleep over it. The next day, he comes to me all teary-eyed and asks if he should turn in his wings and just get it over with.”

“How touching. What did you say to him?”

Nix smiled. “I said, _‘Look, son’_ —”

Harry huffed.

“ _‘—son,’_ ” Nix confirmed amiably, “ _‘I’ve got no time for this. Come look me up after the parade.’_ See, that’s ’cause Sink had called up a regimental parade that morning. Marched us all dressed to the nines to the shittiest part of camp, pulled out a list of all men who’d reported back late, and booted one out from each company, Able to Item.”

“And your man?”

“Wasn’t on the list.”

“Ha!” Harry slapped the desk, already halfway into laughter. “You pulled him off, you sly bas—”

“Nuh-uh. Guess again.”

Nix looked up, searching and finding Dick’s gaze as easily as he always did, eyes crinkling softly at the corners like he was following a nice thought in his mind.

“Well, look at that,” Harry muttered, surprised, because even this late in the game he could still be surprised to find that Dick wasn’t so much a stickler for rules as he liked to uphold a higher sense of justice.

“He never signed in late again. Right, Dick?”

“No,” Dick said, with some effort. “He didn’t.”

“Is he still with Easy? Who’s that?” Harry asked.

Dick let his eyes drop to his footlocker as if the right name could be found there, printed out on the name tag instead of his own. “Dukeman,” he said quietly.

It suited Nix’s character that he’d chosen to remember Bill Dukeman by a minor slip in his military career—or perhaps he didn’t have a better story at his fingertips. Dick could have honored the memory of his fallen corporal with a few more significant stories of distinction and bravery, but suddenly he felt too tired.

“Harry’s right,” he said instead, eyes peeled on the bottle. “We should pour one out.”

Nix hesitated. Dick knew he’d been saving the last sip for himself, and he read the distaste in Nix’s eyes at the idea of wasting it. Maybe, just maybe, it was a little trap that a contrary part of Dick’s brain had prompted him to lay, to test Nix’s reaction.

“All right,” Nix said after a moment. He weighed the bottle in his hand, like he knew he would regret it, and then upturned it. The last few drops spilled over the floorboards. Once it was empty he licked the mouth of the bottle, while Dick’s eyes rested tiredly on the dark shadow at Nix’s feet.

Celebrations were over, and Harry left almost right away. As soon as Harry’s steps faded down the staircase, Dick was aware of Nix’s presence coming sharply into focus as it always did when they were alone, like a vague tingling at the back of his mind.

“You need to be careful,” Dick said quietly, going back to looking helplessly at his papers. “With Harry.”

“What? Why?”

“He’s smart.”

“I was joking. I joke all the time.”

He did, as Dick had noticed several times before, but he was too weary to have this conversation.

Nix jumped, or rather let himself fall from the desk onto his feet. He was still mostly sober, but he had an aura of buzzing energy which showed only when he was either busy solving conundrums or had drunk some. It was increasingly becoming his regular state, but Dick knew better than to think it was his natural one.

Nix came to sit on the bed right behind him. A hand gently rubbed Dick’s spine through the shirt, the gesture warm and comforting, and Dick almost leaned into the touch, but then he remembered that there were no locked doors between them and the closest battalion officer and he stiffened up.

“Watch it,” he murmured, throwing Nix a look over his shoulder.

Nix held Dick’s look with a strangely firm one of his own, and Dick tried to escape it, to pretend interest in his non-existent work, but Nix’s hand wrapped warmly around his forearm and held him fast.

“What’s with you today?” Nix asked with a thin smile. “You’d think that Sink held a gun to your head until you took up the job.”

“That’s not it,” Dick replied, his treacherous body immediately relishing Nix’s closeness even as his brain warned him that it was not safe.

“Then what is it?”

Dick didn’t answer. Still holding Dick’s arm, Nix leaned forward and tucked his chin in the hollow of Dick’s neck.

“Nix, not here,” Dick warned. He heard the other’s stubble grate softly against his shirt, and despite everything the sound immediately turned him on.

“Let’s go to mine,” Nix murmured, hand sliding up to cup around Dick’s shoulder. 

It was so fresh, so careless, the way he’d said that, like it was just a matter of choosing _yours or mine_. Like they were anywhere else but in the middle of a combat theater, where there was no such thing as mine or yours, because anything that belonged to either of them was thousands of miles away.

“Lew—” Dick hesitated. “I’ve got work.”

“What? This pile of,” Nix reached out to grab one of the sheets, holding it up to read, “leave requests? You can reject them later.” 

He dropped the sheet and curled his arm around Dick’s midsection. A wave of delicious warmth expanded over Dick’s back where it touched Nix’s chest, and Dick acknowledged what he’d known for a while—that the battle was lost.

“All right,” he said, patting Nix’s hand. “I’ll see you there.”

Nix unfurled his arm and stood up. On his way to the staircase, he dutifully stopped to grab the two empty bottles. Dick squirmed internally thinking that Nix might be seen with those in his hands, but Nix had his ways of going unnoticed.

“Don’t make a girl wait,” Nix admonished, one foot already on the stairs.

“I might,” Dick replied. “But I’m coming.”

Once he was alone, he flopped back onto the bed and closed his eyes. They burned fiercely under his lids, but he braced against the feeling until it faded into a minor discomfort. He lay there in silence, listening to his own breathing deepen and calm down, and waited for the memories of the Island to come back to haunt him.

  
  
  


**_5 October 1944, Hell’s Highway_ **

After all was said and done at the Island, after the metaphorical dust settled and the actual dust was rinsed off Dick’s mouth, Nix stepped in and strong-armed him out of the whole mess.

At that point Dukeman’s body had been moved, the wounded had been walked or transported to the aid station, Strayer and Sink had gotten their oral reports and backslapped each other for raising such a fine company of men, and Dick had exhausted the last of his energy by checking that each and every thing that needed immediate attention be dealt with. 

When Nix came to smoke him out, hours after he’d given Dick his canteen to drink, Dick was barely holding up, and yet unable to sit down and get some rest. 

His hands had stopped shaking for a while, but his body felt like minuscule creatures were constantly crawling up and down under his skin. Every now and then a tiny muscle in his left eyelid twitched softly.

Nix wrapped his fingers around Dick’s arm and told him in an uncharacteristically gentle voice that he needed to stop.

Dick resisted at first. Nix was treating him with the tenderness Dick imagined he’d reserve for a child or a pet, which was heartbreaking and insulting at the same time. He lashed out and said something he shouldn’t have, and he could tell that Nix had felt the blow but he stood fast nonetheless, shrugging it off with a smile that filled Dick with shame.

“The thing is, Captain, you’re coming with me,” Nix said breezily. “Whether you want it or not.”

Then Nix put him on an Army jeep he’d appropriated somehow and drove him away.

The building was an elementary school, but students and teachers had been evacuated for weeks now. The gym was big and cold and empty, a solitary vaulting horse standing in the center of the room like a relic of an interrupted PT session. Dust and dirt had matted on the floor into a thin layer that crunched softly under their boots.

Nix knew exactly where to go. Dick figured that he’d scouted the place in advance, probably in the long lull between Nuenen and the Arnhem mess. He liked getting the lay of the land in long solo recons that uncovered minor strategic landmarks and useful assets: factories, plants, supply depots, _cellars_.

Nix led him to the back, walked him through an unlit corridor that smelled like mold and chlorine and pushed open a door with a broken lock. He pointed at the tiled floor and the row of rusty shower faucets as if it were the royal suite at the Waldorf Astoria. Dick smiled, partly to acknowledge Nix’s efforts and partly out of genuine relief at the sight. He hadn’t showered in three days.

“Go on,” Nix said, tapping the back of Dick’s arm. He dropped his musette bag to the floor and knelt in front of it, producing a mostly intact bar of Army soap in a K-ration cellophane pack. He thrust it in Dick’s hand. He didn’t start to undress, though, which Dick only noticed after he’d already pulled his sweaty undershirt off the top of his head.

“Aren’t you—?”

“I left my smokes in the jeep. Oh, you want to use the second one from the left, it’s the best. Leave number three, it’s rusted through.”

Dick nodded, feeling a vague unease mount at the thought of letting his guard down while on unfamiliar ground. And that broken lock…

“We’re twenty miles into the line,” Nix reassured him, as if reading his mind. “You take your time.”

“All right. Thanks, Lew.”

Nix threw a last glance around the room, as if to check that everything was in order, then left him alone.

Dick finished undressing and folded his clothes in a pile on a rusty bench. They were filthy, covered in mud and starched with dry sweat, but they were also his cleanest change of clothes available. He didn’t look forward to putting them back on, but that was a problem for later.

Naked, he walked under the faucet, feeling the damp floor squelch under the soles of his feet. He took a step to the right to avoid the first icy water spray, which only grazed his foot, then incrementally shifted a bigger and bigger portion of his body under the stream, until he was all wet and holding back shivers. Moving aside again, he unpacked the soap bar from its waterproof pack, held it under the water for a second and soaped his wet hands, then started scrubbing his skin: his shoulders, his neck, his pits, his belly, down to his privates where his own cold hands proved an unpleasant shock, then his bruised legs, his feet. He drew more soap into his hands and worked his hair until he managed to massage some minor foam out of it.

Amidst shivers he was assailed by questions: who else knew of the place? How long had Nix known? And why had Dick never heard a word about it before? In the middle of his cogitations the water flow suddenly picked up, turning strong and shockingly warm, and Dick stopped thinking. He stepped fully under the shower head and groaned at the sensation of the hot water flowing steadily through his hair and down along his shoulders.

For a while he just stood like that, arms hanging lax and face upturned against the stream. A controlling voice at the back of his head reminded him that hot water was never endless, but he silenced it. It felt so good he might have teared up with relief. He maybe did a little, but any moisture seeping through his closed eyelids was immediately washed away.

He felt his body mellow down, turn soft and boneless under the water pressure. A long muscle in his back which had tightened up into concrete days before suddenly relented, as if they’d removed a piece of his spine. The sensation rolled down to the small of his back and his thighs, sudden but not downright unpleasant. He put his hands up against the wall and was surprised when his legs didn’t just give up under his weight like he had half-expected. He held the position for a while, water battering the back of his head and flowing over his cheekbones and mouth, and suddenly he felt overwhelmed by it all: the long night out in the cold, the hours long assault, the vivid memory of an adrenaline rush so fierce it made his skin prickle and his blood rise just to think of it.

He looked down at himself and sighed, disappointed at his own body’s untimely reaction. He took himself in hand and for a moment he just stood like that, not doing anything, just stalling, considering.

He didn’t hear Nix’s steps through the corridor, nor the door, but he suddenly heard the abrupt screech of Nix’s boots on the wet floor.

Dick looked over his shoulder and reflexively moved his hand away.

“Sorry. I’ll leave you to it,” Nix said.

“Don’t. I—”

He wasn’t sure what he’d meant to say. Nix scratched the back of his neck. His face looked ruddy with sunburn and embarrassment, the same color it took on when he drank too much.

Something bubbled up to the surface, a desire sweet and guilty at the same time, but Dick found himself unable to ask. He turned to face the wall instead, looking down as he wrapped his hand around his hard-on. He gave it a shallow, experimental pull, letting his eyes drop closed at the sensation.

Water kept pouring over his shoulders, now hot enough to scorch and raise steam. Nix divested quickly and walked under the water, bringing his chest flush with Dick’s back. Nix pushed him forward with his weight and none of that painstaking care he’d employed so far, and put his hands up against the wall on both sides of Dick’s chest. Dick sighed deeply, filling his lungs with hot air. 

“God, this is good,” Nix groaned close to Dick’s ear. 

“Yeah.” Dick turned his face upwards, locking their bodies together. When Nix didn’t touch him, just leaned against him in a sort of clumsy embrace, Dick figured that perhaps he wasn’t up for anything. It was all right if he wasn’t, Dick thought, stroking himself. Nix’s chest against his back was enough. This was good.

As he thought that, Nix backed down from the wall, leaving Dick alone. Dick turned his head and saw Nix fumble to pry the soap bar from the package where Dick had carefully stored it, then start soaping himself, answering Dick’s attentive glance with a vague smile. The smile grew gradually, gaining confidence as Dick’s eyes refused to move away, and grew even more so when he closely followed the slow trip of Nix’s right hand down to his crotch. Nix palmed himself, brazenly massaging his growing erection into a full hard-on, and kept stroking it while he soaped his balls with the other hand.

Dick started to turn around fully, momentarily blinded by the water stream flowing over his eyes, and through the blur he saw Nix take a step forward, as if on cue. He expected a kiss, but none came. Instead, Nix grabbed him by the shoulders and manhandled him once again to face the wall, pulling Dick’s left arm up to make him resume his position. Nix’s mouth descended onto the flesh of Dick’s shoulder, lips first, then teeth, and Dick gasped softly.

“Yeah?” Nix asked with a hitch in his voice.

“Yeah.”

Nix’s knuckles brushed Dick’s backside as Nix touched himself. When Nix took another half-step forward, the tip of his cock pressed tentatively between Dick’s cheeks.

“You can,” Dick said, swallowing around a lump of anticipation. “I don’t mind.”

“ _I don’t mind_ ,” Nix repeated. “Jesus.”

“I want to,” Dick corrected. “Nix. I want to.”

The statement seemed to give Nix pause. Dick cast him a look over his shoulder, but Nix placed his right hand on the back of Dick’s neck and held him down, like he might just decide to bend him over and be done with it. Dick widened his stance, waiting.

“Is that so,” Nix murmured, kissing the spot of Dick’s shoulder he’d bit, making it tingle with the slightest hint of pain.

“Yes.”

Nix maneuvered him so that they weren’t standing directly under the water stream, and then, never releasing his clasp around the back of Dick’s neck, reached down to Dick’s backside. Two fingers, calloused and slick with soap, parted Dick’s butt cheeks. Dick felt the rough pads of Nix’s fingertips probe the sliver of skin under his balls, just a touch more confidently than he had expected. One finger travelled up to his opening and traced the rim with a smooth, careful touch that made Dick shiver.

“This,” Nix said. “This okay?”

“Yes, yes,” Dick groaned urgently, and then he felt Nix’s knuckles press on either of his butt cheeks as Nix pushed his middle finger in all the way. Dick flexed his knees a little, angling his body against Nix’s motion so that when Nix moved the finger again, it felt just right.

“Go on, then,” Nix said, brushing his rough chin against Dick’s shoulder. “Show me.”

Dick looked down at his forgotten hand clasped around the base of his cock and gave it a long pull, gathering the foreskin in his palm and over the swollen head. He pulled it back down, letting out a deep sigh as Nix stretched him open with a second, slick finger. After minimal resistance the increased pressure felt delicious; Dick moaned softly as Nix’s knuckles brushed against a good spot inside, casually the first time, then again with clear intention.

“Look at you,” Nix breathed, his fingers sliding deep into and out of Dick’s body, the movement slow and controlled. Dick couldn’t hear it over the rush of the shower, but he knew what his fingers would sound like, the soft squelching of his flesh parting and hugging Nix’s fingers as Nix worked him open. Without warning Nix’s fingers thrust in with a snap at just the right angle, and Dick screwed his eyes shut and rode a sudden, blinding flash of pleasure.

“Lew,” Dick grunted, clenching his fist around his cock. Condensed steam and thin water streams littered the tiled wall in front of his eyes. The shower pressure pouring over his shoulder was dropping, and he knew that soon the water would turn cold, but he didn’t care. He’d let Nix take him anyway, any way Nix wanted.

“This good?” Nix asked gently, though there was nothing gentle in the way his fingers were screwing Dick now, all deep, forceful, exquisitely angled thrusts.

Dick bowed his head, nodding a few times. “Yeah. Yeah,” he breathed. “You’ve got a rubber?”

Nix let out a sharp release of air, a snort or maybe a chuckle. “I’m not gonna fuck you,” he said.

Dick stilled, and Nix probably picked up that something was wrong, because he immediately moved his right hand to cup around Dick’s shoulder and pressed a possessive kiss on Dick’s spine. 

“Soon, okay? I’ll take you somewhere nice and do you proper,” Nix promised, with an amused lilt to his voice. “Now sit back and enjoy the ride.”

His hand reached down and around Dick’s hip, slipping under Dick’s slack grip to take hold of his cock.

Dick put both his hands up against the wall. Nix was a quick study, always had been, so it shouldn’t have surprised Dick to find that he was already good at this. What _didn’t_ surprise him at all was how much Nix seemed to enjoy it. Well hidden under the sarcasm and the self-deprecation there was a domineering streak to Nix’s character, nowhere showing more clearly than in bed. Dick awaited those moments eagerly, like they were treats meant just for him. When Nix took charge, it was like a load was taken off Dick’s shoulders.

Dick sighed deeply as Nix’s fingers slid out of his body, trailing down the back of his thigh. The skin there was wet and slick with soap. Nix swept up some moisture with his fingers and pushed them back in, barely meeting any resistance. Dick imagined Nix’s face as he did that, his brow twisted in the slight frown he usually devoted to maps and battle plans, and groaned softly.

“Yeah,” Nix murmured, lips close to Dick’s ear. “I like that sound.” He twisted his hold inside, just enough to accommodate a third slippery finger.

“God,” Dick grunted, willing his body to relax against the sensation of being stretched full. He bent forward, resting his forearms on the wall.

“Want me to suck you off?” Nix offered, but Dick shook his head.

“No—No, like this. This is— _God_.” He bowed his head between his arms, orgasm building fast. Nix’s body was glued to his side, and Dick didn’t want him to ever move away, not when every little movement of his was making Dick quiver with pleasure.

“Yes,” Nix breathed eagerly, rubbing his erection against Dick’s thigh. “Like that. Come on now. Come on.”

Dick’s body tensed sharply as he came in Nix’s hand, and for one, blissful moment his mind went completely blank.

  
  
  


**_17 October 1944, Schoonderlogt_ **

When he looked out of his window at battalion CP, down to the barn temporarily repurposed into a reception hall, Dick felt again the familiar pang of longing and regret.

He knew that he should do better to snap out of it; that somehow it was beneath him to feel like that. The part of him that thrived on praise and recognition felt that he was exactly where he should be, but that evening his guts had wanted nothing better than for him to jump on one of those boats and lead the men. Whenever he paid too much attention to that acidic, contrary burning of envy in the pit of his stomach, Dick felt like he’d been deprived of something—like that should have been _his_ success, _his_ celebration. Which was ridiculous. He was in his place, doing his part. Which, for now, was typing out mission reports and signing off leave requests.

He’d made a pitiful job of hiding it, too. Harry had showed up some time before H-Hour and they’d talked of all but command, then sat in gregarious silence while Dick worked on his report and Harry wrote a letter to Kitty. That was something they’d grown used to doing in their many shared billets from Aldbourne to France to Holland, and Dick had sorely missed it in his scant two weeks as battalion XO.

As for Nix, he had come by twice: the first time alone, and Dick suspected more driven by a desire for a drink than for his company; the second time with Moose, for no apparent reason than to make fun of him, which by now Dick knew was Nix’s excuse to check on him.

He hadn’t needed Nix or anyone else to come tell him that the rescue had been a success. He’d heard the unspoiled victory in the raucous voices of the American and British troopers heading for the barn, uniforms wet from the river, war paint still smeared on their faces. Ever the forethinker, Sink had asked Dick to see to it that the men had enough beer for a proper celebration, and earlier in the afternoon Dick had had a long parade of kegs rolled down the yard and into the barn—yet another way he’d contributed to the war effort without leaving his desk.

The party had been underway for a while—Dick had counted no less than three cheers for the Red Devils and Currahee—when Harry’s blond hair popped up again at the top of the stairs. He was ruffled and dirty and rather happy-looking. It wasn’t his first round, as the twinkle in his eye suggested and the full cup in his hand confirmed.

“ _There_ he is,” Harry announced to no one.

“Tired of celebrating?”

Harry lifted his cup, spilling a few drops of frothy beer on the floor. “I’m on a mission.”

“Another one?”

Harry shrugged and produced his best Nixon impression. “Paratrooping’s a round-the-clock job, Winters.”

“I can tell,” Dick smiled.

Harry sat heavily on the cot, body folding forward out of weariness and the lulling effect of the alcohol. He took a few long gulps of beer, bending his head back to let it roll down more readily, and sighed happily.

“We missed you out there,” he muttered, and Dick felt that ghost pain of regret burn his stomach again. “Moose’s great, but there’s no replacing you.”

“Moose’s great,” Dick confirmed.

“He is. He’s gonna be. Just—”

Dick crossed his arms on his chest and leaned his shoulder against the window. A muffled singing came from the barn that sounded suspiciously like a slurred, sentimental rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

“We can all be replaced,” Dick said.

“Damn. Don’t tell Kitty.”

“You’ll help him, won’t you? Not in battle, he doesn’t need that. But with the men.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Harry nodded, making a dismissive gesture with his hand. “You leave it with me. We’ll have the next Dick Winters in no time. Mind you, there ain’t much I can do about the drinking. He’s hopelessly normal, our Moose.”

“Ha. The men won’t mind that.”

Harry took another generous gulp and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Speaking of normal,” he started.

Dick waited for a segue, but Harry’s eyes were fixed on the floorboards and he didn’t seem altogether determined to finish the sentence. A long moment passed, during which Dick lost interest and went back to looking outside the window.

“Have you met the British Colonel yet?” Harry asked out of the blue.

“Dobie? Saw him this morning.”

“What do you make of him?”

“Mm?” Dick cast Harry a glance. “What do I make of him?”

“You saw him, didn’t you? With Nix?”

“Yeah,” Dick conceded, “for a moment. I don’t know. Nix says he’s good.”

“All right.”

“And that stunt he pulled off, swimming the Rhine. A weaker man wouldn’t have—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry insisted. “But what do you make of _him_?” 

Dick peeled himself off the window, arms still crossed on his chest, and took a step towards the center of the room. Harry had an intent look on his face and slightly flushed cheeks. He licked his lips, then took another quick sip of beer.

“I spoke to his men, few of them,” he said morosely. “He’s got a bit of a—reputation.”

“What kind?”

“You know,” Harry mumbled. “A _reputation_. Like—Well. The way they put it is,” he took a terrible shot at a British accent, “ _’the old boy went to Eton, you know.’_ ”

“I don’t understand,” Dick said, though he was starting to.

Harry heaved a sigh. “Look, I don’t judge,” he said, eyes deep into his cup. “I’m no saint myself. And I mean,” he rambled on, “if you just look at the things we’re doing here. You think I give a damn what two fellas get up to in their free time? You know what I’m saying?”

Dick opened his lips, but he couldn’t force himself to speak.

“You know what I’m saying,” Harry repeated, not a question this time.

Dick made a passable imitation of a smile. “You can’t hold your drink these days,” he deflected. “What’s that, your second pint?”

“I’m not drunk.”

“You should go back, then. Nix will miss his drinking buddy.”

“Maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll have plenty of company, is what I’m trying to say.” 

Dick rested back against the front of the desk, not quite sitting on it, and willed his fingers to stop grabbing his arms so tight.

“I don’t like gossip, Harry. You shouldn’t spread that kind of talk. It’s shameful enough that Dobie’s men do.”

“I’m not spreading anything,” Harry replied, bitingly. “I’m only telling _you_.”

He looked deeply uncomfortable, which after a year and a half living in each other’s pocket was at the very least out of character. Harry didn’t mince words: not with the men, not with the brass, certainly not with a friend.

“Harry, you’ve got something to say, say it.”

Harry fidgeted with his cup, then downed the rest of his beer. He refused to look up into Dick’s eyes, which struck Dick as the worst part of it all.

“Men like to talk. They like a good story and _they_ like to gossip.” He rubbed his face and exhaled contrarily, like the words were being forcibly extracted from his mouth. 

“And we know him, don’t we,” Harry finished gloomily. “He likes the attention.”

* * *

Hours later, Dick was woken by Nix’s steps shuffling up the staircase. The gait was steady, only a little heavier than usual, or perhaps it only seemed heavier because everything was so quiet.

Dick sat up in the dusty moonlight, blinking himself awake while Nix’s silhouette, just a shade darker than its surroundings, shuffled through the room and sat down on the edge of his cot.

“You can’t be here,” Dick whispered.

“Talk about a warm welcome.”

“Nix—”

“Just for a minute.” 

Nix leaned forward, wrapping his fingers just as surely and casually around Dick’s arm as he ever did. His breath smelled like beer, which reminded Dick of Aldbourne. He wasn’t exactly sober, Dick suspected, but he was still miles away from drunk. It took a lot of beer to take Lewis Nixon down, and he didn’t even like beer in the first place.

“You didn’t show up,” Nix said.

“It wasn’t my party.”

“Whose party was it? Strayer’s? Sink’s?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You’ve been sulking for days because you couldn’t be out there.” Nix’s hand climbed upward, closing around the side of his shoulder. “They missed you, you know. They asked.”

Dick braced against an unexpected, sharp pain at the words, but when the pain eventually dissipated, his chest felt lighter than it had in weeks.

“I missed them too,” he said. “Did they all turn in?”

“Yeah. The Brits are gone. Dobie had them carted off to Nijmegen for dinner and champagne, if you can believe it.” Nix’s thumb brushed his shoulder, suddenly hesitating. “He, uh, mentioned going with.”

“He did?”

“Hm-mm.”

Dick let out a shallow breath. He knew a confession when he heard one, but Nix was here now, not in Nijmegen. “You wanted to go?”

“For the champagne, yes,” Nix admitted. He sniffed. “But you know these queer types. They take you to dinner, they make you drink, and before you know it they’ve run away to the paratroopers with your virginity.”

“They’re the worst,” Dick confirmed—a sudden, bubbly, delirious form of near-happiness building in his chest.

“What about me, _dah’ling_?” Nix asked, his thin smile barely noticeable in the reduced light. “Did you miss _me_?”

“I did,” Dick answered easily.

Nix leaned in. In the two years or so since that first time, Dick could count on one hand the times Nix had initiated a kiss. God knew the man wasn’t shy when he wanted something, but kissing, as agreeable as it was, just didn’t seem to come naturally to Nix. Darkness, at least, helped.

“Good,” Nix murmured against Dick’s lips, pausing there.

“Good?” Dick repeated, hooking his fingers lazily around the back of Nix’s neck.

“To be expected, really. I’m the one ray of sunshine in this bleak, paperwork-ridden existence of yours.”

“Aren’t you the charmer,” Dick scoffed.

“Is it working?”

“Haven’t sent you packing yet.”

“Quite right,” Nix purred, and finally— _finally_ —kissed him.

Nix’s body folded and wrapped around Dick’s, inching into the center of the cot. He released Dick’s arm in favor of placing his hand on the bed and leaned forward on his newfound center of gravity, bearing Dick down with his weight. 

Dick swallowed a sigh around the kiss. Nix’s body was hot, and the room outside the sheets was cold. The warmth drew him in like a moth to a candle, and before he could give the thing any serious consideration, he’d thrust his hands blindly under the wings of Nix’s jacket and pulled him fully on top of his body.

Nix’s fingers greedily peeled the sheets off Dick’s chest to touch his undershirt, his skin. He crumpled up the fabric and pushed it under Dick’s chin, bending his head to kiss Dick’s newly exposed chest. Dick’s fingers curled instinctively around Nix’s nape as Nix suckled softly at a nipple until it turned hard and tender, and then grazed it with the barest hint of teeth. Dick let out a deep, heartfelt sigh.

Nix shifted his weight back on his heels, triggering a fierce, rusty creaking from the cot that had them both freeze in fear like deers in front of the car lights.

“Nix,” Dick whispered. “We can’t. We need to—”

“We’ll be quiet,” Nix promised.

“If someone comes—”

“Half the staff are drunk, the other half are in Nijmegen finishing the job. We’ll be fine, I promise.”

Dick somehow doubted that the whole headquarters had taken a night off, but Nix bent forward to kiss Dick’s throat, the side of his neck, the shell of his ear, and by the time he was done kissing, the little resistance Dick had left had melted like fresh snow under the sun. Victorious, Nix rolled down the sheets and grabbed the waistband of Dick’s pajamas and shorts, pulling them down around his thighs.

“Remember the school?” Nix murmured, palming Dick’s naked erection. “After—”

“Yeah,” Dick sighed.

“You liked it.”

“Yes,” Dick answered again, voice choked by a flash of pleasure when Nix ran a calloused thumb over the sensitive ridge under the head of his cock.

“Been thinking about that,” Nix confessed.

Dick had too, and at all the least appropriate times, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Nix’s dry fingers travelled tentatively under the soft fold of Dick’s balls, tracing the tight rim of his opening. Dick felt himself twitch at the touch, and a wave of goosebumps run fiercely down his legs. He propped himself up on an elbow.

“Not good?” Nix asked, pulling his hand away.

“Good,” Dick replied. “You want to—”

Nix didn’t hesitate, didn’t fumble with irritating courtesy. “Yes.”

“All right. There’s something in my footlocker. Can you—?”

“What is it?”

“Med kit.”

Nix rolled carefully onto his feet. The trunk was unlocked, with the most urgent stuff laid on top: Dick’s duffel bag, his travel kits and leftover rations, his sidearm. Dick rolled over and pushed his legs off the edge, peeking over at Nix’s kneeling silhouette, but Nix didn’t need help: almost immediately he let out a triumphant whisper.

“What d’you need?” Nix asked, opening the kit.

“Vaseline.”

“Uh, all right,” Nix muttered, rummaging until he found, probably by touch rather than by sight, the round tin of petroleum jelly.

Dick took off his pants, folded them twice and laid them on the floor. He felt a little cold, and his hard-on had started to wane. Nix shuffled back to him and Dick moved to resume his previous position, but Nix stopped him. He placed his warm hands on Dick’s thighs and kneeled down gingerly between his legs.

“Scoot up a little. Lie back,” Nix commanded under his breath. His voice was thick with emotion— _some_ emotion, though Dick couldn’t decipher which. Nix took a breath, ran his hands on Dick’s thighs over and over like he wanted to warm them up, then hooked a hand under Dick’s knee and pushed it up to have Dick’s foot rest on the metal frame of the cot.

“Let’s get you comfy, ’kay?” he muttered, grabbing the pillow and sticking it between Dick’s back and the wall. “This good?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Dick murmured, heartbeat thumping in anticipation. Something about Nix’s precise directions spoke of a fantasy carefully cultivated, watered and groomed like a private garden. He had no way of knowing whether the fantasy was about him or he was just a passenger, but either way, Nix’s careful direction was making him hard again.

“Other one too. Okay.” Nix swallowed thickly, taking in the scene he’d just modelled. “Jesus,” he murmured, a quiet awe trembling in his voice. “You look—Damn.”

He dipped his head, placing a wet kiss on the inside of Dick’s thigh and exhaling a gush of hot breath on his skin.

A light brush of Dick’s fingertips on Nix’s temple was all it took to guide Nix’s hot mouth to his cock. Dick felt eager lips kiss a trail from the base up to the head and then open up to swallow it all the way against the roof of his mouth. He stifled a throaty sigh when Nix clasped his lips around the head, and sucked and licked it roughly with the flat of his tongue until he drew a soft moan from Dick’s lips. Dick’s calves flexed on the edge of the cot, his groin rising to thrust his cock deeper into Nix’s mouth. Nix pulled back a little, focusing again on the head, and worked him with lips and tongue until Dick started to feel a thick, boneless pleasure mounting.

So lost was he in the sensation that it took him a moment to register the scraping of the tin lid being unscrewed open. Nix let go of Dick’s cock to collect some grease on his fingers; next, Dick felt a slick digit drag over the tender strip of skin under his balls, searching, circling the hole without breaching it. The caress sent an immediate spark and a shiver up Dick’s spine. Nix kissed his knee and easily worked a little scoop of Vaseline past the rim. Encouraged, he braved further, two steps forward and one back, starting an easy, soothing rhythm that made quick work of Dick’s minimal resistance. Finger lodged snugly inside, Dick adjusted his hips a fraction of an inch and sighed against the feeling.

“I wasn’t sure,” Nix murmured almost to himself, while the thick pad of his finger rubbed experimentally against the sensitive spot inside.

“Lew,” Dick called, unable to produce a full sentence in response. The fingers became two; Dick braced against the added stretch and the pressure and the delicious friction. His thighs trembled; his toes curled tightly around the metal frame. “Come on.”

“Shh, shh,” Nix silenced him, nosing along Dick’s swollen, aching shaft. “In a moment. Still good?”

“Yes,” Dick grunted impatiently, dropping his nape against the wall with a soft thud. He turned his eyes to the ceiling, grabbing two handfuls of sheets to stop himself from reaching for Nix’s head instead. “Yes, yes. Just—”

“This?” Nix asked, licking the underside of his cock where it lay in the fold of Dick’s thigh. Nix’s fingers pumped easily in and out of Dick’s opening just as Nix took the head of Dick’s cock back into his mouth.

It went south from there, like a rock rolling down a steep hillside. Dick clenched his jaw against the mounting wave and willed himself to keep quiet. When he got close, his hand snatched forward to plunge into Nix’s hair. If the pressure or the scratch of his fingertips on Nix’s skull were too much, Nix didn’t let on: he fucked Dick through it, fingers grinding a confident, languid tempo into his body until Dick finally groaned in surrender and spilled into Nix’s mouth.

Lying together on the narrow bed, later, it was tempting to believe that Nix had been right about the whole battalion staff having taken off or passed out drunk. The silence was at one time soothing and eerie.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Dick murmured after a long stretch of neither of them saying anything.

“I won’t,” Nix replied, voice indeed crisp and clear as if it were the middle of the day. To Nix it wasn’t even bedtime, Dick considered with vague jealousy. His eyelids were growing heavier by the second.

He forced himself to snap awake. He felt like a kid, struggling to resist when all his brain wanted was to shut down and reach that blissful, beckoning darkness. But Nix was only half joking when he’d promised that he’d stay till Dick fell asleep.

“—hiding in closets, sneaking out through the window, I’ve done the whole set,” Nix was saying. Somehow the mental picture of Nix sneaking in and out of ladies’ bedrooms like some Casanova of old dislodged a thought that had been nagging at the back of his mind.

“You let him down gently, didn’t you?”

“Who? Ah. Why? Do you care?”

Dick didn’t know what to say. How to explain that he’d both wanted Dobie humiliated for his nerve _and_ hoped that Nix would handle it with care? That he himself had pined for Nix’s affections for so long that the idea of the man’s advances being scorned and ridiculed made him feel—It made him feel—

“Don’t worry, I’m a gentleman. The Colonel’s ego is unbruised.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It was all very amicable. Besides, he had this long a line of fellas begging to suck him off.” 

“Ours?” Dick frowned.

“Ours, his. Have you seen the man? Right now he’s probably being serviced by a harem of bronze-skinned, hairy-butted paratroopers of the cock-loving variety. You don’t need to pity him.”

“Probably not,” Dick admitted. “But I do, a little.”

“Why?”

Dick closed his eyes. For the first time since the Island, it felt like a few hours of good, peaceful sleep waited ahead, and suddenly it seemed foolish to resist.

“You’re here,” he said simply, adjusting the pillow under his head.

Nix’s answer reached him from what seemed like miles away, piercing through his drowsiness like the foghorn of a distant lighthouse.

“Damn right I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> I realized that it's been exactly a year since I posted the first installment of this series. So many feels! <3


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